


the stars to come

by theformalweather



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, M/M, Noctis and Luna are best friends hmu if you agree, anyway it's a Promptis Manifesto, but it's meant to be platonic, could also be Noctis/Luna if you really Want, it's angsty like Noctis, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 07:37:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8047975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformalweather/pseuds/theformalweather
Summary: Noctis falls in love in the bends and breaks between sixteen and twenty. (Relationship study of the events in Brotherhood up to the end of Episode Duscae.)





	the stars to come

**Author's Note:**

> i want off this wild ride i wrote this in two sittings

Noctis is sixteen.

A prince; eyes on him, it's always him. It's his name on everyone's tongue, his life on everyone's mind, but he doesn’t have any _friends_ , save for Luna, and Luna’s far away.

His classmates are grown enough now that they’re not fawning over him, not stumbling over themselves for the chance to speak to him—there’s something hollow in that peace.

Lonely in crowded spaces, Noctis isn’t certain he’d know how to make a friend if he tried.

♚

This is Luna’s doing, he sees that—the fast work she’s made of Prompto.

“She says you don’t get along with anybody,” he tells him, the confidence Noctis lacks tucked in the curve of his grin.

He speaks smoothly, sunshine in his voice and on his face. He’s not the timid boy fumbling his steps in the schoolyard anymore, but he is.

Noctis admires that; the blend of playful, flaky, and kind that he wears on his sleeve, plain as the freckles on his face.

Prompto’s genuine. He expects nothing from Noctis, isn’t afraid to mock him, to spar with him. He whistles, bold, the very first time he steps foot in the palace’s training ground.

While he keeps toe to toe with the prince of Lucis, it’s only a matter of time before he loses the fight. Prompto falls with all the grace he can manage, flat on his back and laughing madly at the marble ceiling.

Though he mentions he’d been sparked by surprise at the fight put up from such a pampered noble, he isn’t shy about the respect he holds for the prince from then on.

Words fail him more often than not, but he hopes Prompto feels that the respect is mutual.

♚

It’s strange to be normal this way.

To find himself on after-school runs to Insomnia’s best arcade, to loosen his school tie, to just _be_.

“You’re awful,” Prompto laughs, feigning best he can that he’s not the bad winner he is. Noctis hides the quiet tug of a smile, neatly placing the game’s plastic gun back in its holder. “Worse than your social skills,” he goes on.

He isn’t wrong, but they fit comfortably in the stiff space Noctis has around him, that little bubble that’s barely enough for two. Noctis struggles with smiles and with conversation, but Prompto fits like he belongs.

♚

Seventeen; he’s made room for those around him.

Luna says she’s proud of him, like it’s some feat that he’s made friends, and he supposes it is.

♚

Prompto’s skyline smile masks a lot, but Noctis doesn’t miss the falter of his charm in the shadows of royalty.

The nobility look down on him like a stray the prince has brought home, and Prompto pretends to be fine.

“You know,” Noctis hesitates, steps carefully into uncharted territory like fresh snow, like he’s dipping his toes into uncertain waters. “They don’t mean anything.”

Prompto doesn’t meet his eyes, but he glances up from the homework left untouched. He looks small; blinking from black-glass walls to the crystalline chandelier above.

He bites the end of his pen, distant. “I know,” he says, hint of something else entirely.

They’re out of place, he thinks. Both of them. In his best dreams, he’s on a battlefield, not a throne. Weapon in hand, steel and spells, wearing blood and dirt—never a crown.

(But he is a prince, not a hero, and those adventures are not for him.)

Noctis vies for the right thing to say; that he is his closest friend, that he made him different, better, maybe. That he’s glad they met.

“You’re not any less,” is what spills out, and Prompto doesn’t hide his surprise.

♚

At eighteen, sometimes Noctis fights sleep and loses.

In the quiet dark of his bedroom, this is the only time he lets himself wonder—wonder if there’s anything to the way he swears the sun comes out when Prompto steps into a room.

♚

When he's nineteen, Noctis is betrothed to Lunafreya.

She graces the gardens with her smile on the evening of their engagement celebration, an unbridled cast of grandeur and elegance, everything Noctis is supposed to be and isn’t.

The rosegold sunset’s warmth has him pulling at his tie—often, he forgets he graduated only to trade his school formalities for those of royalty.

That same pale red bathes Luna’s fair skin, dusk engulfing her like the goddess of light she is.

Lunafreya is beautiful, and Noctis is a lucky man.

The palace hands tell him so as they clap him on the back, congratulating him with champagne on their breath.

“We’ll make a gentleman of you yet,” Ignis remarks with a nudge of his shoulder, and Noctis smiles at Luna from across the courtyard, watches Gentiana thread white-blooming laurel into her blonde hair.

Prompto’s neatly tucked away at the corner, grinning underneath the dogwood groves as he rubs Pryna’s belly. Iris reaches up to sweep the white petals from his hair, smiling at him the way all girls do. 

He doesn’t let himself meet Gladio’s steady stare; to acknowledge the pity in his dark eyes is to accept that there is a reason to be pitied, that Gladiolus is sharper than he lets on.

Why should he feel sorry when he’s been given the hand of a princess that will someday reign queen with iron-grace? Luna is wonderful in every way a person can be; he knows he is fortunate, knows they will be happy.

Noctis loves her, has always loved her—from chasing fiends in the grass fields of their childhood to stepping with caution on ballroom floors because they do not know who they are, he loves her.

She smiles gently, flowers slipping from her loose braids and onto that white dress when she calls Iris and Prompto over for a dance. She sheds her heels, dainty feet kicking up fallen leaves while she twirls the two of them around, one of their hands in each of hers.

Luna makes even Prompto seem graceful, tugging him along patiently, as if he has any idea what he’s doing—as if he’s had the lifetime of etiquette training they’ve had, been taught to dance how an aristocrat should.

Watching them laugh like children, Noctis shakes a leaf the color of the sun from his dark hair.

When Luna grins at him with her hand out, an invitation, his pulse misses a beat and with a shake in his chest of the autumn air he exhales, he finally, truly lets himself admit that he does not love her the way he should.

♚

They’re to marry in Altissia.

Luna is scolded by her advisers for her behavior in the courtyard, and Noctis grins behind them while she feigns apology, pretending to harbor any regret for being herself, for being young.

“They say I’m lucky,” he mentions when they’re alone, when Luna’s brushing grass from her dress and slipping back into her heels for the journey home before their wedding.

She glances up at him, lavender eyes washed out in the last fragments of daylight, dark sunset bleeding over the stars as they wake. “Do you think so?”

He considers her fondly, folding his hands across the bannister of the terrace that he leans into, eyes sweeping the autumn-stained courtyard, plucked flower petals and fallen leaves breathing their last.

“I want to,” he says honestly.

He’s sorry. He’s sorry for the both of them.

When he turns back to Luna, she’s poised like the little girl he remembers her as; feet crossed at the ankles, biting the nail of her ring finger between her teeth. “Don’t be sorry,” she says, and means it.

She rises to her feet; next to Noctis, she’s already a queen more than he will ever be a king. He feels small next to her, paled in comparison to all that she is.

He’s twirling the heavy weight of the engagement band on his finger when she speaks next. “I would never stop you,” she tells him, kind and firm, leans on her elbows to look up at his face. “You’re allowed to be selfish.”

He does and doesn’t understand it.

♚

Noctis makes sense of it all when he turns twenty.

On their way to Altissia, Prompto breaks the Regalia.

The four of them are not trained for the bounty hunt they undertake to repay Cindy for her work on the car; challenging the behemoth, Noctis feels real, bone-deep fear for the first time in a long time.

Everyone’s safe—everything’s _fine_ , but the blood on Prompto’s knuckles, between his teeth when he grins for their victory, plays Noctis’ nerves like strings.

He nearly chokes when Gladio shakes his shoulders with a laugh, praising him for pulling a win for them—he hears him, hears Ignis marveling at the body of the dead beast, hears Prompto laughing carelessly, but he feels like he’s underwater.

His heart aches for each step Prompto takes thereafter.

♚

They’re chased from the lake by a Catoblepas, colossal and lethal, and this time Noctis _laughs_ as the two of them kick up water along the shoreline.

It’s always him at his side when they’re in trouble; always Prompto.

Prompto exhales, frantic in the thrill of fleeing. “Rich boy’s lost it,” he huffs, keeping up with Noctis through the underbrush.

Finding their footing in the thicket, Noctis steadies himself, presses his palms to the smooth bark of a tree that towers above them both; their enemy’s lost interest in the chase, and they take the time to catch their breath.

Prompto sets his back to the tree, and Noctis watches him glance up at the nightscape. Even under the cover of a forest, Duscae’s bright, afire beneath stars unscathed by Insomnia’s city lights.  He whistles, impressed. “Ignis’ll be pissed,” he remarks. “He wanted all of us to watch the shower together.”

It gives Noctis pause; he curses the heart beating against his rib cage, in spite of the escape’s adrenaline having already been long gone.

It’s a different sort of rush.

Prompto pushes himself from the tree, stretching sore muscles from the day, and Noctis can’t pull his gaze from the sun-kissed constellations on his face. If he’s honest with himself, if he lets himself really _feel_ —he finds more worth in the stars in Prompto’s skin than the meteor shower above.

“We should head back then,” he offers quietly despite himself.

♚

Ignis washes the battles from Prompto’s mouth, cleans the torn skin with cloths soaked in something that makes Prompto whimper like an injured animal.

They share a tent, the four of them. Resting before they set forward in Duscae’s worn landscape to make their way back to Hammerhead and the Regalia.

If his breath catches when Prompto, dead asleep, presses his face to the space between Noctis’ shoulder blades, he doesn’t think twice about it. When Prompto wakes him the next morning from a dream where things are different, he doesn’t mention it.

 ♚

“Do you really want to marry Lunafreya?” Prompto asks suddenly.

Noctis blanches; in the high-point of the day’s sunlight, Prompto blinks ocean eyes curiously at him in Cindy’s parking lot.

He looks small again—it’s too easy to forget this is the same seventeen-year-old boy from his school days that shrunk into his seat in the palace’s study because he did not feel whole.

“I want,” Noctis swallows, thinks of Luna’s fair skin and powerful smile, a princess as severe as she is kind. “I want to want to,” he says.

Prompto toes at the asphalt with his boot, flicks absently at the blackfoot daisies blooming in the concrete’s cracks. Thoughtful, he levels Noctis with a look that he can’t make sense of.

“I don’t love her,” he admits with the weight of it at once, and Prompto fails, as he always has, to conceal his reaction. “At least,” he goes on, steeling himself for the eye contact they make, as if he’ll give himself away with a glance, “not the way I should.”

Prompto smiles at him, tugging gently on the strings of his swelling heart. “You’re thinking too much,” he tells him kindly, offering the metaphorical extension of a shoulder to cry on, should Noctis need it. “You can do things for _you_ now and then, your highness.”

Noctis doesn’t miss the malice laced in his voice when he says _your highness_ ; that same sarcasm he’s always regarded royalty with. He doesn’t like when Prompto calls him this, folds in on himself uncomfortably at the sound.

With Prompto in tow, he does not feel like royalty, does not want to be the prince he is. He only wants to be a young man; wildhearted, running from monsters under starfall with dirt and blood caked to his skin, battle scars sinking in as they grin together, victorious or no.

“It’s funny,” Noctis mutters, smile pulling stubbornly at the corners of his pale mouth. “Luna said the same.”

♚

They find themselves in Galdin Quay; the intention’s to take a ferry to Altissia for his wedding.

Insomnia’s been lost to the empire forces—Noctis, his father, and his bride have been pronounced dead.

Of all the nightmares of war, the way he cracks like a bone when he thinks of his father and Lunafreya fallen, it’s Prompto’s gentle hand on his elbow that unmakes him.

His world frays at the edges, and he conveys that he feels like shattered glass with a press of his face to Prompto’s chest. He smells of ash and smoke, and Noctis breathes it in as his lungs shudder, heart sinking to the bottom of his ribcage.

If Ignis and Gladio have words, they bury them, instead checking the group into rooms for the night at the port city’s resort to collect themselves.

♚

(Now, just maybe, he’s the hero he hoped to be. A prince that’s traded the crown for a blade, a boy that’s bloodied his hands with his brothers to protect their home.)

♚

When he kisses Prompto for the first time, he feels it in his veins.

 _We’ll find Lunafreya,_ he promises, squeezes Noctis’ shoulder, and it’s that fire in the sea of his eyes and the genuine, so very real concern lining his face that drags Noctis against him.

It’s when everything blurs—the pier beneath them, the bay before them, the moon and stars strung above—that he knows, _really_ knows why he cannot love Luna.

And it’s Prompto, has always been Prompto.

“I don’t know what to do,” Noctis whispers, lays himself bare; Prompto knows him well, there’s no point in hiding the vulnerability he feels, not when he’s here with hands outstretched to say _I’ll help you_ _—let me._

“No one expects you to have all the answers,” Prompto assures him, quiet murmur against Noctis’ jaw.

It’s that easy, that right; they fit together, rigid as they both are. Their battered pieces line up, and that’s enough for now.

Their world’s tilting, shifting priorities—the wedding seems far away, drowned out, the engagement less than a year ago already faded.

Noctis distantly thumbs at his wedding band, lost in the fray of war. It isn’t checkmate yet; they’ll make it to Altissia, he’ll find Luna and they’ll fight this together, like they’re meant to.

This is so much more now than political marriage and handshakes over kingdom borders—this is war.

It’s a war he intends to fight with each of them. To shed blood with his family.

Prompto tugs his hand to him, stretches his fingers in the space between Noctis’ own.

He wants to toss his ring into the sea; instead, he pockets it for the first time, rises easily to his feet with newfound determination, a king bound for war, and Prompto follows.

**Author's Note:**

> bonus trivia:
> 
>   * the laurel gentiana tucks into lunafreya’s hair represents ambition—you know, the laurel crowns worn by angels, etc.
>   * the white flower petals iris brushes loose from prompto’s hair are clovenlip, which carries the meaning “please notice my affection for you.”
>   * i listened to [start of time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWcGtLblBxs) by gabrielle aplin through just about the entirety of writing this piece; “when you walked into the room just then, it’s like the sun came out” ♫ 
> 



End file.
